


Corresponding Shapes

by bleedcolor



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Fix-It of Sorts, Harry James Potter has some angst, M/M, Romance, Soul Bond, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-17
Updated: 2019-05-17
Packaged: 2020-03-06 16:27:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18854743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bleedcolor/pseuds/bleedcolor
Summary: For a very long time he hadn’t known what the names meant.  He’d woken up the morning of his 7th birthday and there they were; red as blood, one more thing to brand him as a freak in the eyes of his aunt and uncle.





	Corresponding Shapes

**Author's Note:**

> I had just started a different fic entirely when this little gem butted its head in and demanded to be written. I love Soulmark AUs, so I gave in and wrote it. Many, _many_ thanks to Drawlight and LikeLightinGlass who cheered me on the entire way ♥
> 
> Please excuse any weird formatting issues, I tried to catch them all, but I may not have succeeded.
> 
> ETA (7/5/19), This _lovely_ moodboard by the extremely talented LikeLightinGlass:

_I am thinking it's a sign_  
_That the freckles in our eyes_  
_Are mirror images_  
_And when we kiss they're perfectly aligned_  
_And I have to speculate_  
_That God Himself did make_  
_Us into corresponding shapes_  
_Like puzzle pieces from the clay_  
\--Such Great Heights, the Postal Service

 

Harry thinks about it all summer long.  Every time he closes his eyes he is back in that moment: black shadows and echoing footfalls, long, pale fingers gripping his wand, and shimmering letters gracefully rearranging themselves in the air. 

For a very long time he hadn’t known what the names meant.  He’d woken up the morning of his 7th birthday and there they were; red as blood, one more thing to brand him as a freak in the eyes of his aunt and uncle.  Not that they had ever needed much reason for that. Whatever umbrella of safety her indifference had once offered him, Harry had watched the ice of hatred take over his aunt’s eyes completely the first time his hair had grown back overnight after a haircut.  The less that was said about the roof incident, the better. And then the names had come, written into the very fibre of his being. 

Petunia, when she’d seen them, had gone utterly white.  Vernon, conversely, had gone an odd, mottled shade of plum.  They’d both spent the next several hours shouting at him about his freakishness and the hours of his birthday had passed away in a blur of bruising grips, scalding hot water, and vicious scrubbing.  When they’d finally exhausted themselves in their efforts to remove the stain of letters from his skin, Harry had been tossed into his cupboard in tears, wrists raw with bruises and scrapes, the red names still standing out on his skin like fresh scars.  

He’d spent the rest of that sweltering summer in Dudley’s long-sleeved castoffs, wishing for winter.  Once, when he was much younger still, Harry had wished for rescue, but he’d learned soon enough not to waste his wishes on things that would never come true.  Instead he wished for the obtainable, inevitable relief of cooler weather and eventually it came, though not soon enough to prevent a new set of whispered rumors in the schoolyard or carefully probing questions from his new teacher.  The questions came to a stop after a parent’s evening, Harry’s teacher warily regarding him with a new coldness in her eyes the next morning. Like so many things about life at the Dursleys’, it was nothing new.

By the time he’d gotten his Hogwarts letter Harry had been well used to suffering through the heat with baggy sleeves hanging down past his hands, hiding his secrets.  His school robes concealed his wrists just as easily as Dudley’s shirts and when he’d bought them that had been the only thought Harry had given it. The names had been a part of him for so long, at that point, that he hadn’t even stopped to consider that they might have anything to do with magic.  It wasn’t until the night of the welcoming feast, when a certain set of eyes had lingered over him, hot and dark, until a name and a rumor had been whispered to him, that Harry realized it _must_ have something to do with the wizarding world.  But whatever hopes for answers had tentatively grown that night were quickly eviscerated by razor-sharp words in the gloomy light of a classroom.  Harry decided then not to think of the names at all, that nothing good would come of it.

Now he can do nothing _but_ think of them.  Every morning the first things he looks at are his wrists and the crimson that slopes over his pulse points.  He imagines he can see the throb of his blood moving beneath the letters and when he can’t bear to look at them any longer he bends his wrists, hiding the names in the crinkle of thin flesh and the shadow of his palms.

“The name of your soulmate and your greatest enemy,” Ron had told them with a furtive mutter, cheeks red, one morning shortly after that first ill-fated Halloween feast.  

Hermione had asked about the ‘tattoos on his arms’ in that blunt way of hers and when Ron had hissed at her to keep quiet Harry suddenly realized that maybe he should have been asking questions all along.  If he’d learned nothing else that first year at school it was that things that were secret didn’t end well for him. The combined weight of their stares had prompted Ron to give his answer, but he squirmed in his seat uncomfortably when it had become clear that neither Harry nor Hermione were going to let it go without further explanation.

“It’s really rude to talk about,” Ron had said after another moment of obvious reluctance, pressing in closer to murmur to them.  “It’s a form of divination magic. It’s sort of bad manners to talk about predictions of the future, you know, but the _Par Animo_ spell is deeper than that. It’s...Mum says it’s binding.  It’s as good as a true prophecy.”

“I’ve never heard of anything like this spell!” Hermione had hissed, to Harry’s mind clearly affronted by the idea that something this significant had been left out of _Hogwarts: A History_.

“It’s really finicky!  Mum and Dad said they performed it on all of us, but Bill’s the only one who had the spell actually take.  Hardly anyone bothers with it anymore, except for old families because it’s traditional. I’m surprised your mum and dad would, Harry.” Roy had squirmed a bit more here, giving Harry a sidelong look.  “It’s traditional to keep the marks covered with bracelets, too. It’s a bit like walking ‘round starkers if you don’t.”

Harry had his turn at blushing at _that_ particular bit of information and he’d pulled his arms a bit further into the recesses of his robes.  “You could have said!”

“Well, it’s rude to bring up, isn’t it?” Ron had looked offended at the very thought of doing something so ‘rude,’ when Harry knew for a fact that he’d belched in Neville’s face on a dare at dinner just the night before.  “Besides, you do keep them pretty well covered even without the bracelets. I thought maybe you had a good reason.”

His only reason had been willful ignorance, which suddenly hadn’t seemed quite as good a reason as it had to start.  The word _soulmate_ felt like a heavy stone against his chest.   

He and Hermione spent a week in the library, learning everything they could about the _Par Animo_ spell.  When he returned to the Dursleys’ that summer he had been armed with all the information the Hogwarts library had to offer on soulmarks and two wide, black leather bands fitted snugly around his wrists.  When they saw the bracelets his uncle and cousin, both, had several snide comments about boys wearing jewelry. If either of them had known the truth behind the names it might have cost Harry more than just some name calling, but for the first time in nearly 12 years his luck held out and his relatives spent most of the summer ignoring him.

Taking advantage of his good fortune Harry had spent that entire first summer thinking as well, freed from the looming mystery of Nicholas Flamel and the philosopher’s stone.  He thought about Voldemort. He thought about the fact that he was technically a killer, though he tried not to think about the way Quirrell had burned up just from touching him.  He tried not to focus on the names, either.

Before Hogwarts it had just been strange, the oddity of those two names.  Two men he’d never met or heard of, names that seemed almost made up, bleeding their way across his flesh.  And when he’d met one of the men who carried a name on his wrist, it was stranger still. He had spared a few moments to worry about it those long stretches of night in the dorm, when sleep had abandoned him, but the first months of Hogwarts had been full of a host of worries and questioning that one hadn’t seemed worth the risk.  Even when Ron had given him the key to his answers... It had been a lot more black and white, then.

It had seemed so clear to Harry, then, that Severus Snape was his greatest enemy.

Snape hadn’t been the one hexing his broom during his Quidditch match, but that hardly excused any of his other transgressions against Harry, starting from the very first moment he’d walked into the Potions’ classroom.  He couldn’t fathom someone who hated him so overtly being anything other than an enemy. Not to mention, Snape was so _old_.  Surely his soulmate would be closer to to his own age.  And he was _ugly_ , too, Harry reminded himself in those moments when he couldn’t help but think that there was a possibility that Snape wasn’t his enemy.

Dumbledore trusts Snape, the small voice in the back of his mind pointed out against his denials.  But Dumbledore had trusted Quirrell, and look where that had gotten them. No. No, it didn’t bear thinking about.  

If he could not find it in himself to hate Snape the same way he hated Voldemort it was only because whatever he would learn to truly hate him for hadn’t occurred yet.  It was the only thing that made sense. Snape was casual cruelty and endless insults, blatant favoritism and crooked teeth, all sallow skin and hooked nose. If the injustices that he visited upon Harry and his friends didn’t seem to catch and itch under Harry’s skin in quite the same way, maybe it was only because he was now endlessly waiting for something worse.  So, instead, he wondered about the name on his other wrist.

He had yet to meet anyone with the name Tom Riddle, that first summer.

 

~

Harry closes his eyes, watching the letters rearrange themselves in his memory.  Tom Marvolo Riddle.   _I am Lord Voldemort._ He wishes he could go back twelve months, to thinking Snape was his greatest enemy, thinking somehow, somewhere there was someone who would fit into all the empty spaces of his life, even he didn’t really know what that would mean yet.

On one wrist he has the man who murdered his parents, who tried to kill him in his cot before he could even walk properly.  On the other is a man who thoroughly hates him, who snaps and sneers and scowls, who is old enough to be his father, and who is ugly and angry and bitter.  On one wrist is the name of his greatest enemy and on the other is his soulmate. _I should have known that I can’t have anything good_ , Harry thinks.

Finding the diary had been an icy shock to his system.  “T. M. Riddle was awarded for services to the school fifty years ago,” Ron said, and Harry’s stomach dropped.  “Maybe it’s a distant relative,” Hermione had offered reassuringly, once Harry haltingly explained to them about the name on his wrist. (No, not that name.  Definitely not _that_ one, they wouldn’t understand.  Better that he implied Tom Riddle could be his soulmate _or_ his enemy, better to pretend that he doesn’t know any Severus Snape and certainly doesn’t have any such name on one of his wrists.)  Harry couldn’t decide whether to hope or despair.

For weeks he had flipped slowly through blank, water-stained pages and wondered about the person who had owned the diary.  His fingers had carefully traced the smudged name in the front page as he tried to decide if the handwriting matched that of his soulmark.  

When the incident on Valentine’s day had finally clued him in to the true nature of the diary and Harry had walked through Tom Riddle’s memory, it had been strange, to see that handsome face, those dark eyes, and to think that this man was somewhere out in the world, fifty years older.  Maybe with Harry’s own name on his wrist. He had tried to imagine him older as they wandered down the corridors of Hogwarts, tried to imagine grey streaked through dark hair and crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes. By the time Tom jumped around the corner to confront Hagrid, Harry’s stomach had been tied in knots.  Somewhere, he’d thought, there is someone just for me.

It was a short-lived fantasy, crashing down around his ears within moments in the Chamber of Secrets.   _I am Lord Voldemort_.  Again and again the words lit behind his eyes in the quiet of his bedroom.  When the diary had been destroyed, as he had freed Dobby, and through the chaos of the end of the year, there had hardly been a moment to consider it.  Harry hadn’t thought there was much to consider anyway-- that he’d had happiness in his grasp and it had slipped away was nothing new.

Now that he is back at the Dursleys’ it’s sinking in that it’s more than just disappointment.  Every time he closes his eyes he considers the fact that he thought _Voldemort_ was his soulmate.  Every time he opens his eyes he sees his other wrist: _Severus Snape.  Severus Snape. Severus Snape._  The letters throb in time with his heartbeat.

 _Wrong_.  The word pounds through his mind like a headache.   _Wrong. Wrong. Wrong._  Just the idea of it leaves him queasy.   _Wrong_ , he thinks.  But it is truth; it is inescapable.  Harry spends a day flipping through an old school thesaurus that Dudley never even bothered to open.  He looks up all the synonyms he can find for _impossible_ .

          **Impossible** \- _adj._  
Incapable of being considered.  Inconceivable. Unattainable. Insurmountable.  Hopeless. Undesirable; _said of things._ Objectionable.  Offensive. Disagreeable; _said of persons_.  Difficult.  Unmanageable.  Preposterous. Absurd.  Untenable. Unimaginable.

The only thing missing is a picture of Severus Snape, Potions Professor, scowling and sneering, inset into the text.

Dumbledore trusts him, says the small voice in the back of his mind once again.  And the thrum of Harry’s thoughts change their beat. _What if, what if, what if._ He is barely 13 and the only idea he has of soulmates comes from dusty library books and the trashy soap operas his aunt watches anytime Vernon and Dudley are out of the house.  The idea of being _in_ love isn’t as appealing as the idea of simply being loved, but the idea of Snape considering _him_ for either of those things is laughable.  And Harry isn’t convinced he’d want to be loved by anyone who is so obviously, easily heartless as Snape is.

 _What if, what if,_ whispers his mind again and again through the summer.  It’s possible that Snape’s wrists are clear of Harry’s name, that he carries no blemish of supposed destiny.  What does that change, if it’s true? Harry has never approached Snape, never asked him if he knew, has certainly never had the temerity to say to the man, “You’re my soulmate.”  He can’t imagine the knowledge will transform his savage Potions professor into someone kind and loving. But he wonders. _What if._

Third year finds that he can’t bear the question any longer.  There is another murderer out to kill him and, though it’s only October, he dreads what will happen when summer comes and he has no choice but to return to the Dursley household.  Vernon’s memory is long. He doesn’t think anything will change, but a desperate sort of hope bubbles up in him. He is grasping at any reason he can find to keep putting one foot in front of the other.  He is barely 13 and he is _tired_.

His mind says ‘ _soulmates’_ will not matter to a man like Severus Snape, that the idea of it will not press and lift against his ribcage the way it does Harry’s. But Harry stands in Snape’s classroom as the other students file out, wrists bare and heart thundering away in his ears.  His hands are clenched into fists at his sides as he waits for Snape to acknowledge his presence. He’s already late for Divination, when that gaze flicks coolly over him, and even though he expects it, his stomach still flips and twists at the sneer he’s given.  Harry looks away.

“Five points for inattention, Potter.  Class ended ten minutes ago. Haven’t you somewhere else you should be?”

Harry’s fists open and close again in frustration and he bobs his head in a mute nod, thoughts frantically trying to arrange themselves in his mind.  He had somehow forgotten that he would have to _speak_ to Snape, would have to utter the words that he still has trouble believing himself, most days.  He had somehow forgotten that Snape is nothing less than an arse and would, of course, take points just for Harry’s very presence in his proximity.

“Mister Potter,” the words are nothing short of icy as Harry doesn’t scramble to exit the classroom at the obvious dismissal.  “Perhaps I have not made myself clear. Your continued presence in my classroom is not required, nor, in fact, desired. Remove yourself _at once._ ”

“I-I need to speak with you, Professor.”  Harry manages to grit the words out with less stuttering than he’d feared, but they’re met with a sharp sound of derision.  
  
“Nothing you have to say has any interest to me, Potter.  Get out.”

Harry shakes his head, still not quite daring to meet Snape’s gaze.  “Please, sir, I need to--”

The sharp sound of chair legs scraping backward breaks into his words and the click of heels on the stone floor quickly follows, ringing in Harry’s ears with such alarming suddenness that he feels almost dizzy with it.  Snape isn’t going to let him speak and he knows with a certainty that he has felt few times before that he _cannot let that happen_.  Hard points of fingers curl against the cup of his shoulder, but before Snape can do much more than tighten his grip, Harry thrusts out his wrists between them, his robe sleeves sliding back to bare the names that he has done his level best to keep hidden for nearly six years.

A moment stretches out between them, then two, and the hand on his shoulder slackens, the touch changing from punishing into something different. Harry gathers every ounce of Gryffindor courage he possesses to lift his gaze up to Snape.  The man in front of him looks stricken, an expression that Harry would have sworn his hated Potions’ master could not make. Except the evidence stands in front of him, raising a hand to touch the curve of an ‘S’ on Harry’s wrist, fingertip tracing carefully over each letter in turn.  Harry feels gooseflesh rise on his arms and fights against the urge to shudder at the touch. Snape’s thumb rests against his pulse for another long moment and Harry’s gaze travels over his face, considers the sudden tiredness in Snape’s eyes. Whatever he had expected, he had not expected this strange human version of Snape, had not truly believed it existed. 

“Fate has been cruel to you, Mr. Potter.”  The words are soft, the nearest thing to kindness Harry has ever heard from Snape.  He shifts, helplessly leaning closer, though when he looks back on this moment hours, days, _weeks_ later he will not be able to explain what he is thinking.  He’s half afraid he might want to hug Snape. A door slams in the hallway and it leaves Harry cold to watch the way this strange man seems to fold himself back behind the cruel gaze of his professor.  The hand on his shoulder turns into a talon once more and he is yanked along, shoved firmly through the doorway of the classroom. His satchel and school books scatter themselves against the far wall of the corridor a moment later and the door slams closed with a click.  From within the classroom there are several large thumps and bangs and it is only when they cease that Harry gathers his things and trudges away in a daze of confusion.

Nothing changes.

Snape’s tongue is as blisteringly unkind as ever.  He strikes out with vitriol at every opportunity he has and he is certain to not find himself alone with Harry again, despite Harry’s best efforts.  Nothing changes, but Harry can’t help but wonder. He watches Snape now, when he thinks no one will catch him. Most days the memory of that quiet stranger seems to have come purely from his imagination, but once, twice, in quiet instants as students file out of the Potions’ room, he catches Snape’s gaze and something there almost seems to flicker.

Harry watches and the weeks pass.  Snape’s control is impeccable.

Nothing changes.

Cedric Diggory falls in the cemetery to a flash of indifference and green light and Harry weeps over his body with sobs that shake through him like an earthquake.   _If only he’d been faster_.  Sirius falls behind the Veil and Harry’s turns his tears into rage.  He destroys every delicate thing he can find in Dumbledore’s office because he cannot destroy himself.  _If only he’d been smarter._  Dumbledore falls from the Astronomy tower and Snape’s eyes flare green with the glow of his spell.  Unforgivables fly from Harry’s mouth and collapse under the weight of his weakness. _If only he knew how to hate._  He doesn’t have a soulmate, he has the names of two people he hates and who hate him in return.  He is Harry Potter, the boy with hatred written into his veins, and he cannot manage a single killing curse.

Everything changes.  

He spends a year living in a tent, evil an anchor that hangs around his neck.  He relearns the meaning of cold and hunger every time he wakes in the morning. He wonders again and again how Hermione and Ron can stand to stay, but rage burns through him when Ron chooses to leave them.  He is pathetically grateful at Ron’s return, icicles forming in their wet hair as they fall into a rough hug. His anger burns itself out in the smoldering ruin of Slytherin’s locket and he clings to the silvery memory of the doe, leading him through the forest, when the dark threatens to overwhelm him again.

~

He finds his soulmate (the quiet man) in the middle of a war.  Snape is bleeding out on the dusty floor of the Shrieking Shack and Harry wastes precious seconds trying to hold the ragged openness of his throat together. His fingers are sticking with blood before he notices the memories leaking from Snape's eyes.

“ _Take...them._ ”  The silvery strands are the first things his soulmate has given him.  Harry is desperately afraid they will be the last. A hand clutches his wrist, his _wrist_ , fingers spanning surprisingly tightly around where Snape knows his own name is hidden beneath black leather. “ _Take them_.”

Harry nearly fumbles the flask Hermione has given him.  His hands shake as he collects the memories as quickly as he can. Snape's grip grows weaker.  “There, there! Now we can get you t-to the infirmary.”

“ _Look...at…me_.” The voice is barely a whisper.  He lifts his gaze. It's the cruelest thing Snape has ever said to him.

Harry shrieks when those tight fingers loosen and fall from his wrist.  “No! No, no, _no_!”

Voldemort's cold voice intrudes on his denials,  but Harry doesn't hear the words, doesn't hear anything but _look at me, look at me_ pounding out a frantic tempo through his mind.  

“Harry. _Harry._ ” Hermione's voice now, ever practical.  “Harry, we have to go.” 

“No, I won't leave him here!”  He can't understand how he ever mistook this feeling for hate, when it is so much _worse_ than that.

“There's nothing more we can do!” She seems bewildered by his refusal, reaching out to urge him away.

Harry flinches back. “He's my _soulmate_ ! There has to be something--I can't leave him here!  There has to be a-a spell! _Are you a witch or not_?!” He shouts it accusingly, but he isn't at all certain who he's blaming.  Something warm and wet spills over his cheeks. Harry thinks it must be blood, that there must be a wound somewhere, for this to hurt so much.

Hermione stares at him with wide, watery eyes.  

Everything changes.

~

Harry stares down into the silvery pool of the Pensieve.  The memories are the important thing now, he tells himself.  The words taste like a lie, lingering at the back of his throat, but he knows that he has to do this, that he has to know what Snape sacrificed everything to have him see.  He leans over the basin and the images unspool before his eyes.

There is a girl, hair the color of a new penny, and there is a boy, eyes like ink, and they are _friends_.  Harry watches as their friendship grows and breaks apart in fleeting moments.  He watches as Snape, with nothing to lose, turns to Voldemort. He watches long, cold fingers wrap around Snape’s bared arm and the tip of a wand press into unblemished flesh.  He sees the letters on Snape’s wrist, all too familiar, and hears Riddle’s pleased murmur. “This was meant to be, Severus. My name written onto your very soul.”

Harry shudders to consider the way any of this could have gone differently, who Snape could have been, who _he_ could have been.  He watches Snape fall to his knees and beg for his mother’s life, watches Snape confess that he is the one who condemned them, wonders which of these moments built the foundations of the man he’s seen only in glimpses.  The scene in front of him changes again.

They are in the dark and a baby is crying.  

“Ma ma ma _ma_ ,” is gasped out between shrieks and Harry has no experience with babies, but the sound of it catches his breath in his throat.  There is an anguish in those wails that makes his chest ache. Dumbledore is at Snape’s shoulder and he pushes them through the open doorway ahead, leaving Harry no choice but to follow.  

In the Pensieve Harry doesn’t need seconds for his eyes to adjust to the dim light and he recognizes the scene in front of him immediately.  He is the baby. Dumbledore and Snape are in Godric’s Hollow and at their feet red hair spills across the floor like blood. Harry watches Snape tremble and shake and somehow, years and miles apart, they both choose to look up, to stare fixedly at the mobile spinning listlessly above the cot.  Dumbledore moves through his peripheral vision and Harry hears the soft murmur of a shrouding spell through a jagged break in baby Harry’s screaming as he gasps for the breath to continue. Harry blinks against the burning in his eyes.

The screaming resumes and then moves closer after another moment and Harry finally turns his head to see baby Harry squirming angrily in Dumbledore’s arms, trying with all his might to break free from his grasp.  “Ma ma _MA_!” The baby’s face is red and each successive cry seems only to get louder until Snape moves forward in a blur, catching Harry just before he falls from Dumbledore’s grip.  A shocking silence rings suddenly through the room as Snape awkwardly lifts the child to him. Snape looks down at the infant with something like shock and dismay wondering, Harry presumes, at the sudden quiet.  Dumbledore seems more exhausted than surprised by this turn of events and Harry wonders if Dumbledore had looked as tired last year, when he’d spent so much time ill.

“Take the boy to Hogwarts,” he says gravely, watching as Snape tucks the child closer to him.  “The Aurors will arrive soon and there is much still to be done tonight.”

“Ma,” the baby whimpers tearily, and presses his face against Snape’s throat as he’s carried from the room.

The scene spins and they are at Hogwarts again, waiting in the Headmaster’s office.  Harry the baby is asleep on Snape’s lap, head cradled in the cup of his palms. From his vantage point Harry can see Snape’s astonishingly naked wrists, bracketing his infant shoulders, and the letters that stain them.   _Tom Marvolo Riddle.  Harry James Potter._ Snape’s body is curled forward and oceans silently drip from his cheeks onto the baby’s face.  In the silence of the room the quiet man, _Severus,_ whispers over and over again.

“ _I promise.”_

 _All this time_ , Harry thinks and closes his eyes against the tears that threaten.

When he opens them again the baby is gone and Snape sits across from Dumbledore, stiff-backed and tense.  Harry can see the new lines on his face and he traces them with his eyes as he listens to Dumbledore explain that he must die.  He listens, oddly detached, as Snape rails against Dumbledore, watches his Patronus, _the doe,_ dance through the headmaster’s office, and a hundred other moments from the past year fall into place in Snape’s memories.  

The last memory dissolves and Harry straightens, painfully aware of the time that he has lost, that the man he’s been searching for has been right in front of him the entire time, but he’s always been too blind to see.  The wound in his chest spills wetly over his cheeks again. It’s no wonder that Snape had greeted the idea of death so easily, when he knew Harry was slated to follow him. His soulmate’s cruelty continues to reach new heights. He wonders who will care to retrieve Severus when he’s gone.

He takes a hitching breath and then another, knowing what must be done.  The snitch in his pocket seems to flutter for a moment, reminding him that he is not alone.  He only hopes he will be forgiven for it.

~

**_And then he greeted Death as an old friend, and went with him gladly, and, equals, they departed this life._ **

~

There’s something about the vast expanse of white infirmary sheets that speaks to Harry about new beginnings.  Or perhaps it’s the man sleeping between them, the way his chest rises and falls with steadily with each breath.

There’s a noise from the door and Harry reluctantly pulls his gaze away from Snape to see who’s peering in the doorway.  

Hermione Granger, brightest witch of her age and the reason Snape is laying in the bed beside him.  Harry smiles at her a bit helplessly. He will never be able to pay what he owes her, though he knows she would never ask him for anything.  She smiles back at him and steps into the room. “How is he?”

“Madam Pomfrey says he should wake soon, but it will be some time before he’s fully healed.”  Time Harry would like to imagine will be spent getting to know each other better, but more realistically presumes will be spent arguing with one another.  Nothing about Snape has ever been easy.

“It shouldn’t have worked.”  Hermione has that fretful look on her face again, the one that’s visited again and again since they’d retrieved him from the Shrieking Shack.  “It’s not what Petrificus was meant for.”

“It’s magic.”  Hermione has always been concerned with the why, but Harry is content just to be grateful.

Hermione makes a discontented sound, but sighs after another moment.  They’ve had this conversation three times now and Harry’s answer hasn’t changed.  “Professor McGonagall says you should come down to the Great Hall for lunch. We haven’t seen you for days.”

“I’ll be down when he wakes up.  I don’t want him to be alone.” Hermione shakes her head at his answer, but gives him a slight smile, not bothering to protest.  They’ve had this conversation too.

“I’ll let her know,” she says simply and leaves Harry alone with Snape once more.

He goes back to considering the idea of new beginnings, thinks of all the things he wants to say when Severus wakes.   _I’m sorry.  I didn’t know.  I’m so glad you’re alive._ Almost absently, he draws his fingertips against Snape’s, considering the neatly trimmed nails and their contrast to his own bitten fingertips.  He wonders if Snape uses a spell or if he uses muggle tools to keep his hands manicured. As if he can guess the ridiculous trajectory of Harry’s thoughts, the man in the bed groans softly.

“I’m in too much pain to be dead.”  It’s Snape’s voice, raspy but unmistakable, and Harry’s eyes snap upward to meet the fathomless darkness of his gaze.

“Oh.  You’re awake.”  Harry’s voice is alarmingly choked and Snape’s expression morphs from annoyance into apprehension.

“Foolish boy, _what’s happened?_ ” Harry can practically see the questions crowding into Snape’s eyes and he shakes his head because, despite all the things he’s been waiting to say, he only has one answer. He wraps his fingers carefully around Severus’ wrist, fingertips lightly tracing the letters of his own name, silently echoing the moment he’d shared with a quiet man, years before.

“Fate has been kind to us.”


End file.
